


Orange Lilies

by Phyrren (rainbeep)



Series: cockpit conversations [4]
Category: Star Wars: Edge of the Empire (Roleplaying Game), Star Wars: The Old Republic Era
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, vague smut i guess??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-30 10:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19851592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbeep/pseuds/Phyrren
Summary: Maybe humans weren’t the weak ones. He was.Three years after the conclusion.





	Orange Lilies

She had been right, all those years ago, when they had compared their races. Mirialan women stood more like Twi’lek, wide hipped and full-figured, and - if she were anything to go by - humans were just  _ smaller _ . ‘ _ No wonder we’re the minority now _ ,’ she’d said, and it was true. Humans hadn’t evolved as well as other species, and they were going to burn out soon, weaknesses too obvious and not keeping up with the other species.

He wondered if it was this weakness that kept her coming back. She had left that first night before he had even relaxed, shoving her feet into her pants and barely had her shoes on before she’d fled. Phyrrus had believed he’d never see her in his inch of the galaxy after that - her appearing so out of the blue being a streak of odd luck he would never match. Sure, the sex had been decent, but it was her closed lips and uncertain gaze as she left that made him want her back.

And she did. By the stars, she came back, weeks later with a changed hair color and a bag of credits. She was still colder than the spirits he downed, but she had come back, sat in his booth with him, and had followed him back to his place.

And she came back, each time sooner than the last. She stayed a beat longer every time, he noted, her teeth no longer grit when he laid her on his bed. The first night, she had taken all but a handful of his tokens on the way out.

By the fifth time, he stopped counting his change, because she stopped charging him. She had stopped leaving before he had even hit the bed next to her, spent, and she no longer turned her head away from his lips. The nails in his braids were still harsh, and she still left scratches down his shoulders, raw and unforgiving.

She hadn’t forgiven, and she probably never would.

Arden never would, but he wondered how far from it they were when she finally let him kiss her shoulder, her neck, cheekbone. How much had she given back to him in the time since they had re-met, years after his actions? After Fezzik had to hold her back, screaming and crying, eyes too blurry to properly handle her weapon and hands shaking from adrenaline to get it to shoot.

“ _ Leave _ ,” she had spat, throwing her blaster at him in a last-ditch attempt to make him feel as badly as she had. “The next time I see you, I  _ won’t miss _ , you  _ bastard _ .”

Phyrrus was waiting for the other shoe to drop, to wake up to a gun to his head - or wake up at all. But he still brought her back, and still she returned, whispering of the ones she’d saved from her fate as they fell asleep; the slum lords she’d slaughtered, the slaves she had paid to find a new way of life.

Arden was always gone before he awoke. It was as if he had slept with a ghost, and he wondered if he was going crazy. Was she like the beings on the planet they had visited? Did this person truly exist, returning when she felt like it, clothes strewn across his living room and weapon always within arms reach?

They really were weak, he agreed. Humans would never last. It was a wonder they had this long, their young so frail and completely dependent on another to simply exist. They fell into dumb traps, played dumb games, and gambled far too much with their own beings.

But he knew he was even weaker than all of them combined, waking up beside her, shades of orange and red taking over her back. Lillies, Arden had said; he hadn’t even asked her that evening, surprised that he had taken her in his bed so often and never noticed that she’d covered up the imperial flower. Her scars still were obvious, so many years later, but she had replaced the yellow-toned bud with lilies, blooming and striking.

They stood for revenge. It was fitting with what she had found herself doing with her life, and with what she had gone through. 

He was weaker than her. He had so easily thrown away their relationship for his ability to  _ live _ , and she had so easily stumbled upon him, on this tiny, cold planet. She had come back, so small and unassuming in his bed, a feral animal who trashed his place and took his money.

Arden had come back, and she had finally decided to stay, hair licking her shoulders and drool down her cheek; her tiny body nondescript among his blankets. She was so human that it hurt.

He’d bitten the hand of the one willing to listen and match him blow for blow, and she had still come back, mumbling in her sleep and curling up to him. Phyrrus ran his arm down her ribs, the small of her waist and flare of her hips.

Maybe humans weren’t the weak ones. He was.


End file.
